From The Mission to The Castro, from Ocean Beach to South Beach – Observations of people and trends in San Francisco

Main menu

Monthly Archives: May 2012

So this post doesn’t have much to do with hipsters, but it certainly has a lot to do with the com-modification of an identity and lifestyle- and considering that The Mission is like half gay people anyways it kind of fits. And yes, there are gay hipsters (ie. gipsters), but that is whole other post of its own.

Could it be any more “Girls who grew up aspiring to be Disney princesses meet their 20’s”?

I recently heard that the drunk-off-bottomless-mimosas-and-puking-in-the-street-20-something-straight-girl-from-the-Marina-hang-out, ie. the Castro’s Lime, will be closing. To it I say, good riddance. I’ve never actually been to brunch at Lime, and I’m not sure why anyone would want to go. My association with the place is this: I walk to the gym and see some girls getting out of a taxi go inside. They drink their bottomless mimosas with their queeny, and dapperly dressed 22 year old gay friend, and enjoy the sexy modern design of the space that glows with some pastel blues and pinks. An hour or two later I walk back by the gym and I see the same girls puking in the sidewalk, the same sidewalk I have to walk on each day now filled with lady vomit. They are some hot tranny messes, and its not even noon.

Ladies listen up: we don’t all necessarily want to be your gay bestie /therapists, we don’t all have fashion advice or a good gym routine for you, and we don’t want to be your token gay friend. We don’t want to have to live up to some idea of what your thought our friendship would be based off what you’ve seen in Sex and the City, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or Will and Grace.

We want the right to get married and have kids, but not to do it out of societal obligation. We want job security via federal non-discrimination policies, we want the ability for foreign same-sex partners to get visa’s and green cards like a married straight couple, we want to be able to hold hands in the suburbs and country without shocked looks, and we want the right to visit our love ones in the hospital when sick.

And we all want to look good in a tight pair of jeans, sorry that one is undeniable.

It’s nothing against straight people. Some of my best friends are straight. There’s just something particularly insufferable about hosting a bachelorette party at a gay bar. And it’s unique to straight women and gay men. Straight men wouldn’t celebrate a bachelor party at a lesbian bar. I mean, they might try, but I’m not sure how well that would go over.

I think it’s great that straight women feel comfortable around gay men, and vice versa. It’s a singular relationship — one that far surpasses the outdated conception of a “fag” and his “hag.”

But throwing a bachelorette party at The Abbey or any other gay bar isn’t a way to celebrate that friendship: it’s weirdly exploitative. It’s not so much about the joy of having gay friends as it is about the essential novelty of gay people. When a group of women go to a gay bar to let loose for a bachelorette party, the gay men become props.

Which is not to say that women don’t get objectified all the time. To that extent, I understand the appeal of going to a bar where the men can be sexual objects, and if you’re a woman, no one’s going to try to rub his boner against you. But it’s especially insulting to go somewhere specifically to ogle people whose sexual preference doesn’t include you.

I’ll go back to the lesbian bar theoretical, even though — yes — women in general have it far worse when it comes to objectification. Straight men who decided to spend a bachelor party checking out lesbians would be regarded as gross assholes, and rightfully so. A bachelorette party at a gay bar is not as stigmatized, but it still reeks of shallowness and a failure to recognize gay people as, you know, people.

That might sound overdramatic, but for the most part, straight women who throw bachelorette parties at gay bars aren’t considering the political context — the fact that they are celebrating their impending nuptials among a group of people who aren’t legally allowed to get married. It sucks on that level, as Cooley contended, but on a larger scale, it’s tasteless. It reduces gay men to unpaid entertainers. Background noise. Party favors.

The alternative is simple. If you want to watch a gay man take his shirt off, hire a stripper. They’re also a lot cooler with you slipping dollar bills in their thongs, if you’re into that sort of thing.

—

Please feel free to comment on this article or email me at missionhipstersblog@gmail.com if you have a strong opinion on this either way.

*Please note no women were harmed in the making of this rant. But a few dreams were shattered and ego’s bruised.

Apparently some creative individual created this parody menu of a popular Park Slope food event. I believe I would order the Panty Slaw, the grass dirt Ten Percent soda, the Dead Dog, and the Rasberry Quintent with (extra) gay sauce.